Can a constitution devised centuries ago to replace a monarchy, and based on a citizens’ militia, possibly hope to run an empire whose scope is beyond anything ever dreamed by its framers? Or must the existence of standing armies and the influx of inconceivable wealth inevitably destroy our democratic system?

In the firsttwo novels of his Rome trilogy, author Robert Harris re-tells the life of Cicero so as to be easily relatable to the modern reader. Besides making the subject matter not just digestible, but delicious, he illustrates the link between our modern republican governments and the ancient model upon which they were based. Following a six-year wait (the book was published in 2009), he completes the series with Dictator. With this third book, I sense him speaking much more directly to modern politics.

Take, for example, the leading quote. I immediately put down the book when I read it, because I felt it worth some further thought. Later, I discovered that this passage is not only used by the book’s publisher to advertise the work, but it is also frequently quoted in reviews. It’s phrasing (obviously) can refer, also, to the American Constitution and pretty much anyone reading will immediately grasp the analogy. One’s mind would be forgive for immediately applying the quote debate over the U.S. Constitution circa 2019.

The meaning of such a phrase to Cicero, however, isn’t the same as to the reader. The reference to militia and standing armies returns to the title of the first novel, Imperium. The checks and balances which made up the government of Rome were designed to prevent concentrating power (imperium) in a single individual, or allowing those in power to retain it over a long period of time. Elections were held annually and the most powerful position, that of consul, could only be re-sought after 10 years out of office. Likewise, military command was by appointment of the Senate and also would expire annually (subject to renewal). This prevented the permanent, centralized “deep state” that, nevertheless, seemed to becoming a necessity when governing an expansive empire.

Putting the above quote back into the context of the novel, it is preceded by “And so we drifted towards calamity. At times, Cicero was shrewd enough to see it.” This leads to the above quotation, supposedly spoken by Cicero to Tiro. The author’s voice then continues.

And then at other times [Cicero] would dismiss such apocalyptic talk as excessively gloomy and argue that the republic had endured all manner of disaster in the past – invasions, revolutions, civil wars – and had always somehow survived them: why should this time be any different?

This may be one of the strongest arguments against overreacting to today’s events. We have passed through times that must have seemed at least as serious as our current situation. I would imagine that the turmoil of 50 years ago felt similarly divisive to Americans. In terms of actual civil unrest, actual incidents of violence, it was demonstrably worse. Yet here we stand, stronger and more prosperous than ever. Is it our hubris that insists that we are unique? In this, we’re usually wrong.

Of course, Cicero was (assuming he did, in fact, “dismiss such apocalyptic talk”) wrong. Caesar did cast aside centuries of tradition to seize power. Rome fought a Civil War that saw Romans killing their fellow Romans. A good chunk of the Senate died in those wars and the Senate that replaced them was hardly the Republican institution which Cicero defended. Caesar was assassinated. Cicero, on the orders of the government, was killed by soldiers outside his home.

Even still, the Roman Empire went on for another 500 years after Caesar’s dictatorship. In those centuries, the Empire continued to expand and to grow in both wealth and strength. Change isn’t always good, but it also isn’t always bad. It is inevitable. Even if the end result of today’s machinations is a major restructuring of the whole of Western Civilization, that still may not count as an “apocalypse.”

That the novel Dictator happens to be more provocative along these lines in a large part due to its subject matter. For much of this book, Cicero is out of power. As a result, the narrative is less about his political maneuverings and more about his political philosophy. Even after the death of Caesar, when Cicero was the de facto ruler of Rome (by virtue of being a senior ex-consul), we see him as much being swept along by events as making them happen. Even his position of power, his imperium if you will, derives more through luck than from desire – he is the last man standing. Pompey, Crassus, Catiline, Clodius, Cato, and Caesar are all dead. The two consuls are away leading the SPQR legions (as it happens, never to return) and other senior military men are in distant provinces.

Cicero spent the last part of his life committing his thoughts to writing. He attempted to translate Greek thought into Latin and to preserve his own philosophies for the ages. In a further attempt to extend his life’s work beyond his own time, he archived his letters to his friends. Wikipedia quotes Polish historian Tadeusz Zieliński on the importance of Cicero’s letters to Western Europe’s appreciation of classical civilizations. Would there have been an enlightenment, an American revolution, without Cicero to guide us?

“[T]he Renaissance was above all things a revival of Cicero, and only after him and through him of the rest of Classical antiquity.”

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

Let us step back from the speculative and return our attention to the imaginative. I looked at the strategic/operational treatment of the Roman Civil War in an earlier post and now want to consider the operational/tactical level. I refer to these in combination because the subject matter cries out for some higher-level, unifying context for the handful of great battles between Caesar and the defenders of the Republic. Both of the games I played here have a operational piece in addition to allowing one-off play of individual battles.

Rome versus Rome.

In Great Battles of Caesar, each battle can be played as a stand-alone scenario in whatever order the player desires. Great Battles‘ campaign game has the player, as Caesar, choosing where to move after each victory against some computer-executed responses. Overall victory comes through eliminating all of the Pompeian armies. There isn’t any interaction between battles – the details of your results in an earlier battle don’t alter the setup for subsequent encounters. Really, its just a matter of picking a non-historical order for the scenarios.

For myself, I tried to follow the historical course of the war. I first took Caesar to Spain before heading east. The result was it had me fight the Battle of Munda, Caesar’s end-of-war, post-victory mop up. Putting that battle up front really doesn’t make any sense, nor is there any strategy to ordering the battles. The only real variety that can come from the campaign game is when, as shown below, you are unable to reach a province containing an enemy army. In that case, a “turn” simply goes by without a battle. There’s not much point to it all.

The interface is ancient but the concept works well enough. I move my army from Rome to Asia Minor.

Within each battle, however, I continue to warm to the way that the Roman armies are simulated in this old series. Is it the scale – the size of the formation which units represent and the length of a battle (number of turns)? It is the command and control – particularly the requirements to use group movement and to balance movement and morale? It really makes me wish I could somehow force the Great Battles board game combat tables and rules into the Field of Glory engine. That 1990s UI begins to weigh on you after a few fights.

I did have a couple of crashes as I fought against Pompey’s armies. It is hard to pin them down, but I have a guess. While I turned animations off in the options, there are still some animations that play during combat. One of them is the animation that occurs when a unit uses its missile capability as a precursor for an infantry attack. I suspect that when the AI has Roman legions and is using both the pila and the group move, these incidental animations can becomes significant enough to cause whatever crash I’ve been seeing in Great Battles of Caesar.

The Roman far right at Thapsus. Those elephants aren’t so tough.

I leave this game with the screenshot from the Battle of Thapsus and do so for a couple of reasons. Again, it illustrates relationship between game units and the armies’ formations. This relationship feels more like a try at the historical order of battle and less like a miniatures’ take. I’ll also note a historical detail, which is actually implement above. At Thapsus, Caesar found himself at considerable disadvantage (3:1?) when it came to the relative balance of mounted units. To mitigate, Caesar mixed infantry into his Cavalry wing. His gambit was successful. He had his infantry use their pila like pikes rather than spears and his wings were able to hold, bringing him victory. In Field of Glory II, each wing is two “stands” of cavalry.

This screenshot also shows, although not particularly clearly, the brittleness of the Senatorial elephants. Caesar’s army was able to disrupt the opponent’s elephants with volleys of arrows, causing them to panic and rampage among their own troops. Great Battles of Caesar demonstrates both effects in action and shows them to work. Compare and contrast with the elephants in Field of Glory, which are nigh on indestructible.

On to Africa. The last three stages in the Caesar campaign portray the Civil war.

The campaign in Field of Glory II is considerably more than a “Load Scenario” UI. The structure has you start with a core army which you must husband through the seven battles in the campaign. You get some reinforcements along the way, but are also required to bleed off some of your army to “garrison” your victory locations. The underlying system has considerable flexibility. In FoG2, for example, it is possible to create a branching campaign (although that wasn’t done in this case) and potentially much, much more. Of course, scripting a complex campaign is a lot of work that might not, at the end of it all, make the campaign any more fun. In any case, this campaign is a linear series of randomly-generated battles whereby the strength and quality of one’s army depends on the earlier results.

One little feature I appreciated in the FoG2 campaign system is what happens when you lose. Losing a battle one time takes you to a second chance to fight it with that portion of your army that managed to survive the first attempt. If you lose a second time, the game prompts you to go back to an earlier stage, before you lost. It’s really no different than working your way back through your own save games, attempting to figure out where you’ve gone wrong. Still, the fact that I’m guided though my attempts at redemption feels better than when I have to do it myself.

The historical Thapsus. Those elephants are like ancient tanks.

The biggest drawback when playing the campaign scenarios is that they ARE randomly generated and DO depend on previous results. Because of this, you get a battle that is somewhat similar to the historical fight, but not exactly like it. In many ways, this takes the soul out of refighting Caesar’s war.

Alternatively, you can just fight single scenarios in the same way that Great Battles of Caesar allows. The hand-designed scenario makes Field of Glory look a little better. No longer are you fielding armies that somewhat-resemble the historical forces – an actual effort has been made to reproduce the historical order of battle. Even still, the line-up in Great Battles of Caesar felt a little more authentic. Part of the problem may be that Field of Glory is more generic and therefore more flexible. There’s nothing that says a unit has to represent a cohort (or 2 or 5 or 10), so you try to optimize the number of units relative to the capabilities of the engine and the AI. The screenshot above looks considerably more like Roman legions arrayed for battle than the campaign’s auto-scenarios, and yet… compare it to the setup for Great Battles (with just under twice the unit count), and it might feel like you didn’t have quite enough stands of infantry to go around.

I’m picking a little bit too much on what may be some minor points. Field of Glory II does plenty of things better than Great Battles of Caesar, including not crashing. It’s just that I want it to do everything better.

When fighting the war against Caesar, the forces of Pompey and his Senate allies felt they had a decisive advantage. Even after evacuating Italy, they retained a superiority in naval forces. With their resultant control of the Mediterranean, they assumed that Caesar’s legions would be hemmed in while their own could move about at will. Caesar proved them wrong. Despite an insufficient transport fleet and a deficit in warships, he was able to outmaneuver Pompey’s forces to land in Greece and then ultimately defeat him at Pharsalus.

Chaos in a rain storm. It may not look it, but I’m about to take the lead.

If I felt that land battles were underrepresented in computer gaming, the situation for naval battles is even worse. If (besides Mare Nostrvm) there’s been another computer game covering tactical sea battles in the ancient world, I’m not aware of it.

Mare Nostrvm has a three-scenario campaign to represent the Roman Civil War. It begins with a battle taking place shortly after Pharsalus where a Caesarian fleet defeated Pompey’s forces off the coast of Illyricum, The “campaign” is a simple unlocking series of scenarios, ending with the decisive Battle of Actium (Octavian’s defeat of Mark Antony).

When I first got outMare Nostrvm, I was having quite a bit of trouble. Taking control of this Pompeian fleet, I continued to struggle, at least initially. It took me a glance at the Slitherine forums and a run through the manual to get a grip. The biggest thing I was missing was that the speed of the boat is always determined by the plotted distance. I had been plotting ramming attacks by placing the “ram” icon (the spikey ball in the above screenshot) in the hex where I wanted the attack to take place. Because attacks are usually made against a nearby boat, that typically meant two or three hexes away. However, plotting a short move means that the ship moves slowly during its execution (see green lines, above). To achieve ramming speed, it is necessary to plot your move through and beyond your target hex so as to maximize your damage when you hit. Referring to the above, see the yellow, orange, and red lines which plot an attack on the “cut off” red (Caesarean) ship just to the left of center.

Beyond that, I had trouble (still do, for that matter) anticipating the movements of the enemy ships as I plot my own moves. Guessing where an enemy is going to be after I move one or two hexes seems to befuddle me. Embarrassingly, I’m often getting even the direction of the enemy’s move wrong (i.e. I fail to distinguish front from back). It’s something that gets better the longer one spends in the game and could be immensely improved by some board-game-like planning to carefully determine the results of moves. Assuming this is the right way to play the game, I could sure do with some in-game tools to help visualize movement while plotting turns. I don’t want to be poking my fingers on my screen.

Speaking of forums, strategies, and poking fingers, I did read some of the chatter on the Slitherine forums regarding the future state of the game. Several posters complained that the game was too easy, which shamed me into trying to improve my own skills. To me, the challenge level of the AI seems decent. I suspect it can re-plot movement between turns as a way to make up for its lack of more complex strategic thought, but that might just be my own incompetence talking.

There were also complaints about the lack of developer activity from the game. Shortly after release, there was talk about adding a scenario editor and other improvements. From about a year ago, the posts have been primarily wondering if the game is dead. Mare Nostrvm came out of a barely-more-than-one-man development effort. Given its limitations, its a very good (not to mention the only) product. I don’t think one can fairly complain that it was left “unfinished,” even if you do long for more features or expansions. This may just be a signal that the model – the tiny, independent developer making niche wargaming products – is not a viable one. It would be a shame, because this is the kind of game computer-wargaming needs more of.

We obviously need more options. My look through the clearly historically-rich setting of late-Republic Rome, I have played only two examples of tactical land combat and one of them is quite a bit out-of-date. For balance, I’ll throw in one more, also quite a bit out-of-date. Back in the interval after Great Battles of Caesar called it quits but before Field of Glory made its run, there was a independently-made, free-download option.

As my army closes on the Pompeian forces, his skirmishers retreat.

Hoplites is described as a card-based version of GMT’s SPQR. SPQR (1992) is one of the Great Battles of History boardgames. It was the sequel to Great Battles of Alexander and is (at least to some extent) the board game which became, in its computer incarnation, Great Battles of Hannibal. But Hoplites, as even the title will indicate, is not limited to the early Roman Republic. It ranges from ancient Israel through the Tokugawa shogunate, tossing in a few high-fantasy armies for good measure. I don’t know what went through the mind of its creator, but I do remember thoughts I had around that time. Most (if not all) efforts to create a decent, historically-accurate tactical wargame (particularly focusing on the pre-gunpowder battles) required an AI that could competently control the armies. Even if you have some innovative ideas about command and control or combat resolution, you’ve first got to create an engine that can handle hex-and-counter battlefield manipulation. Unless…

What if you can just get rid of the hexes and counters? This actually kills two centurions with one pilum (sorry, that was awful). The linear deployment of armies was necessary to maintain force cohesion, meaning a 2-dimensional board is already presenting a dimension too many relative to how a battle was actually fought. Forces lined up facing each other, often extending their lines so as to match the enemy’s deployment. Just because a game player can figure out how to whirl units around an enemy flank via complex and innovative use of the movement points doesn’t mean he should. Repositioning or even just turning a unit in the thick of battle would have been quite a challenge on the ancient battlefield. Therefore, a board without hexes, without movement, in many ways distills a battle down to its most basic, functional components.

A solid wall of legionary cohorts breaks through the enemy line, smashing the disordered rear.

That said, Hoplites in no way replaces a Great Battles or a Field of Glory II. Most critically, there is no way to recreate a historical fight. The variability in the game is the “armies.” In the above screenshots, I’ve used a Julius Caesar army against a generic Roman Republic army (given the commander, it is about 100 years out of date). The armies are then brought into contact one unit (card) at a time, the order determine by a combination of player choice and luck-of-the-draw from the army deck. It simulates, reasonably enough, difficulties of command and the fog of war. There is really no way, though, to capture the historical feel of a battle nor to try out strategies appropriate to that historical setup. For example, in many of these battles I tried to take advantage of Caesar’s superior quality, but numerically inferior, force by engaging in some form of oblique attack. Despite what seems to be a reasonable representation of the main line and flanking forces, I see no way to mimic these kinds of tactical maneuvers.

So many years later, Hoplites remains a decent little program. Besides that, its price is right. Its free, it runs without crashing, and it does at least as well with ancient tactical combat as most of what’s out there.

So what else is out there? I’ll make a few honorable mentions. There are obvious far more than three tactical games covering this era of ancient Rome. Although I’m surprised nobody has yet gotten it exactly right, I can’t say that nobody has made the effort. Tin Soldiers, which briefly seemed like a good attempt to fill this gap, is now completely eclipsed by Field of Glory II. Tiller’s heirs at HPS have a product that covers the Civil War, but I can’t see laying out the money to get it. Playing the Punic Wars did not leave me wanting more. The package has a nice set of battles modeled in considerable detail, but I just don’t want to play it.

I’ve disparaged Total War a bit when talking at the strategic level, and so I’ll hold of smacking it around again at the tactical level. If nothing else, I’ve yet to spring for Rome 2. From its genesis, Total War has always seemed to march in the wrong direction and so I’ve been in no hurry to pay for the new version of Rome. One of these days, I’ll find it cheap enough and probably pick it up. We should remember, while we’re at it, that Rome: Total War came to us as a reaction to any number of RTS titles. Perhaps one of the more tactics-oriented was Celtic Kings (a Caesar in Gaul title, which I have played) and its sequels (which I have not). Still, there are any number of RTS titles (starting with the original Age of Empires) covering this era. It’s just that there are next to none that I can think of that have a good, historical model of Roman legion combat.

While on this topic, I’ll make one last comment. I also moved along though S2:E2 of Roman Empire: Reign of Blood. It is difficult to stomach. Again, I have to wonder why they bothered putting together a show in a “documentary” style only to make it so inaccurate. The overall arc of historic is pretty much correct, but the details are immensely sloppy. For example, the office of consul is described as a single position rather than the two-man office that was so critical to the Republic. Caesar’s assignment in Gaul is portrayed as a punishment rather than the choice posting that Caesar maneuvered himself into. I could go on, but what’s the point.

Speaking of departing from reality, we saw in a previous screenshot Scipio headed back to Rome for his new assignment, but many months too late. Had he been where he was supposed to be, he would have been already fighting in Spain and Rome would have won The Battle of Ebro River. Yet in my Alea Jact Est game, no naval combat took place for me so far.

For naval combat I had to dig into my Mare Nostrvm installation. I can’t believe this game has been out for five years now, but there it is. It’s a tactical game of galley warfare in the Ancient world. A player can either engage in a series of linked historical battles or random fights based on army point allocations. The latter can be played either against the AI or against another player. The historical battles are organized as campaigns requiring one to win one battle to move on to the next one in that campaign. Campaigns span history from Greeks fighting Carthage pre-500 BC up to the end of the Roman Republic and the Roman Civil Wars.

Planning a turn. This should be an easy victory.

The turns are played in a planning phase followed by simultaneous execution. Your ships follow exactly the orders that they are given, although they do have to remain within command distance of their squadron leader (three such leaders are visible in the above screenshot, see the trailing red banner) to be under player control. Commands can also be given just to the lead ships, in which case all subordinates will adopt the same orders, as well as to each ship individually. You can mix-and-match as needed, first giving division-level orders and making individual exceptions.

Executing. Those Carthaginians may not be where you thought they’d be.

It’s not a fancy game, but it has enough bells and whistles to make entertaining. As your plan is executed, the sounds of drums and waves accompany the little ships as they move. The decks are animated with red and blue dots running about. When two ships get close, missiles fly between them and when then grapple, the little dots rush forward to engage their counterparts.

The commands themselves are limited. You can instruct your ship either to try to ram the enemy or to grapple. If a ship is not moving fast enough, the ram option might be missing. Plowing into a ship broadside will sink it immediately where as entangling two ships cause a battle to ensue between their crews which might take several turns to resolve. Ships can be sunk, captured, damaged, or just ensnared by another ship.

As far as the simulation goes, it has the features that one might ask for in a game of this type. It models both sail and oar power (although sails may be disabled per scenario, as was the case here). It also (obviously, from the screenshots) includes land. There is little in the way of own-side AI. You, the player, needs to anticipate where the enemy ships are going to be in a turn or two and plan accordingly. In other words, you plot your moves by targeting hexes and not enemies. The computer AI seems competent enough – I’ve been beaten by it a few times and not seen it do obviously stupid stuff.

Quite a mess. Rome prevailed, but it was not the one-sided battle of antiquity.

In the real Battle of Ebro River, Rome used the element of surprise to rapidly gain the upper hand, at which point the Carthaginians turned tail, abandoning their ships on the shore. No such outcome here. Although Rome still won, the battle was a close-fought thing. As you can see, my formations were completely disordered and I lost a number of ships to enemy rams*. If anything, the computer seems like he is holding it together better than I am. However, Carthage started at a disadvantage all around.

The Carthaginian fleet was surprised while foraging, modeled here by restricting Carthage’s movement during the first turn. Their ships were also manned by novice crews, making them inferior to the Romans in ability. Rome also had larger and more ships, giving them further advantage when the fighting turned to hand-to-hand. The Carthaginian’s one advantage was the superior maneuverability of their smaller ships. It was not enough for them to defeat Rome and it was also insufficient here.

*For some reason, I have been unable to sink any enemies using rams in this scenario. Every enemy I have defeated, I have defeated through capturing. I should probably just read the manual.

I had previous complained that Alea Jacta Est falls into an unhappy medium between a tactical and a strategic representation of the Roman Republic. My comments about the game’s treatment of the Pyrrhic War is that it left the player with too little of value to play with, focusing primarily on the operational level of that war. It occurs to me that one of the issues is that the Pyrrhic War scenario may be better played as Pyrrhus, not Rome. Rome won the war, in part, by fielding new legions* when the existing ones were defeated in battle. So the Roman strategy is one of replenishing their forces, throwing them into battle, and then see who wins. If it’s a loss, then repeat. For Pyrrhus, however, he has more operational decisions. He is more limited in his resources and so has choices to make. How can he fight his enemies in detail, particularly once Carthage is involved. Does he focus on Italy or take the fight to Sicily?

Similarly, in the early part of the Second Punic War a gamer may be better challenged by taking the part of Hannibal. He too has the single but large invading army which he can use against the Roman forces wisely to break the Roman will. Yet from the Roman side too, the operation strategies may be more interesting. While there are similarities between the invasion of Pyrrhus and the invasion of Hannibal, the Second Punic War is far more complicated. While Hannibal leads the main Carthaginian force, his brothers have forces in Spain. As the war progressed, Italy, Spain, Sicily, Africa, and even Greece all became potential fronts in this conflict. Given all that, it might be worth looking, again, at the war from a higher view.

Cooler heads prevail and I hold off engaging Hannibal until August.

As I briefly described before, the meat of Alea Jacta Est family is managing army operations. This consists of movement, the resulting combat, and the management of supply. In this case, the movement is implemented as a planning phase followed by a month’s worth of simultaneous execution. In addition to all of that, the make-up of armies must also be managed. In the AGEod family, this is more than just creating “stacks” of units subject to supply limit. First, the mix of the army’s units drives the tactical level and provides one of the player’s main methods of impacting the detailed battle results. In addition to balancing the combat unit types, the commanders must be chosen to be sufficiently capable of managing the army for which they are responsible. This can imply balancing the military with the political as poorly-performing generals inevitably make their way up into senior command positions. It’s a complex system, and one that (for the Second Punic War) I’m jumping into with inadequate preparation. Rather than think about the game as a simulation of the war as a whole, I’m going to look at it more as a framework playing Hannibal’s early victories, but seen from the Roman side.

I started the scenario that begins in the late fall of 218 BC. Hannibal is across the Alps and the stage is set for the showdown across the river Trebia. Modern politics is often (and annoyingly) compared with warfare. In the Republic of Rome, however, success at the ballot box was often tied to one’s success on the battlefield. Sempronius Longus’ eagerness to engage Hannibal, even when at obvious (particularly as seen in retrospect) disadvantage, is in part because achieving personal glory on the battlefield would translate to political and financial success in Rome. It was therefore easy enough for Hannibal to draw Sempronius into a fight across a river in winter conditions, where he was defeated.

Taking on the vague persona of “Rome,” I’m under no such pressure. I was slow to relocate Sempronius’ forces from Sicily** and then, once they were in northern Italy, moved them into camp to properly prepare for battle. I was so slow, in fact, that Gaius Flaminius and Gnaeus Servilius Geminus replaced Sempronius and Publius Cornelius Scipio as consuls. Maybe Sempronius was on to something? I also waited a few more months for reinforcements to arrive (which, frankly, I was still trying to get figured out) and for the weather to be good. I wouldn’t make my move until August.

I moved my camp to the same side of the river before fighting, but you can’t argue with the numbers.

Having fully assembled both consular armies and beefed up my forces, I first crossed the Trebia River at an unopposed crossing so that I could attack Hannibal on even ground. As it turned out, it didn’t do me much good. Despite my organization, I came upon a Carthaginian army which significantly outnumbered and outclassed my own. All my preparation wasn’t for naught. The loss wasn’t a disaster; my losses were only about double that of Hannibal and more than half my forces remained in fighting order. I was able to retreat back across the river and keep my army intact, ready to fight against Hannibal (and, yes, lose) another day, as he moved south through the Italian peninsula. Publius Cornelius Scipio, meanwhile, although many months behind schedule, moved back to Rome in preparation for leading his historical command in Spain.

As Scipio returns to Rome, Hannibal catches my weakened army near its camp, again giving about twice as good as he gets. Problem is, I can handle the losses but he can’t.

I’ll not dwell on the campaign that followed except to note one thing. As I continue my chase of Hannibal through Italy, I’ve yet to experience the massive defeat and resulting loss of all legions that marked Hannibal’s greatest victories. Part of this may be due to my more pensive operations; the Romans have yet to be caught out with the consuls split and defeated in detail. Also, by the time I actually did lose a single legion to Hannibal, I already had a replacement waiting in Rome. I suspect that was triggered in the scenario by the historical defeats that never actually happened in my game. It is also, I imagine, due to a leveling effect that comes from the random resolution of battles. Statistically speaking, this should tend to avoid the outliers in terms of extreme victories or defeats, as a Cannae or Lake Trasimene would seem to be.

The end result of all this is that, because Rome never has a catastrophic loss and because I’m recruiting replacements in anticipation of heavy casualties, the pace of my campaign picks up rapidly. In the game, I can force a major battle every two or three months through the seasons with favorable weather. I lose, sure, but each time Hannibal also loses forces he can’t replace while Rome is able to patch up her legions in short order, ready to send them out again. What is it about the modeling that causes this departure from reality? Am I allowed to beat the cycle of military defeats followed by Senate reaction by anticipating my losses? Is this a reasonable result of my losses being lower than the historical ones? I have no idea, but it does have implications with respect to exploring “what ifs.”

*In the Pyrrhic War, it was less an issue of creating replacement legions as rebuilding the ones that had been depleted. I use the terminology because, isn’t a unit which has had the bulk of its soldiers replaced in many ways “new?” Plus, I want to make the comparison with the actual destruction of legions from which Rome suffered in later wars.

**In another historical note, I came across a telling detail regarding the relocation of the Sempronius’ consular army from Sicily to Italy. In game, I marched them by land, a procedure that took time and cost me through attrition. Sempronius himself dismissed his army after having them swear an oath to reassemble at Armenium (right edge of the top-most screenshot). Essentially “strategic movement,” as it is sometimes called in other games, was left as an exercise for the individual soldier. It must have worked, at least to some extent.

I’ve come to rely upon the five-star rating system in Netflix. I know there is no guarantee I’ll like a five-star movie nor hate a 2-and-a-half star one, but it is a good guide to at least point me in the right direction. This is somewhat mitigated by Netflix’s decision to give the “for you” rating which differs from the actual rating. Frequently, when I notice a movie is rated much lower than I think it would be, I notice that Netflix has discounted the rating “for me.” Even more frequently they are right to discount a title that, while popular, just isn’t for me.

With Amazon, on the other hand, ratings can be problematic. This is not just a streaming-video problem – similar issues involve all the products on their site – but it seems more acute when it comes to their video offerings. In particular, it seems hard to find a movie, show… what have you… that isn’t rated somewhere between 3 and 4 stars, give or take.

When it comes to Amazon users, it seems there isn’t a product out there that doesn’t have someone who loved it (no matter how bad it would seem to be objectively) as well as someone who had an absolutely terrible experience (again, even if they were the only one). Add to that, there are the users who give one star because the particular shade of blue didn’t match the other appliances in their kitchen. Others might say “the product is fine, but I really didn’t like the packaging. Two stars.” Finally, there are those five-star reviews that say, “I haven’t assembled by product yet, by I was really impressed with the prompt delivery.”

I won’t even go near the accusations of cheating within the product rating system though the use of phony user-reviews connected to the seller. I’ll leave it to the wizards at Amazon to figure that one out. But even if the reviews are “honest,” they are tough to rely upon. But with so much stuff being sold through Amazon, one needs at least some ability to triage the offerings to narrow things down to a reasonable set of choices.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.

Having missed the “Director’s Cut” of Oliver Stone’s Alexander before it was removed from Netflix, I wanted to look for something to get me into that ancient Macedonian mood. Field of Glory II has extended its reach back to the wars of Alexander the Great. Mare Nostrvm covers a similar period, but on the sea. Both titles are subject to sale prices in the Steam summer sales.

Amazon has a half-a-dozen or so possibilities that are available with Prime video. None of the available choices are particularly well known, so I decided to go with the highest rated. Alexander the Great is a two-part series that seems to fit the bill. Three-and-half stars or so with a number of very positive written reviews (and one terrible one, naturally).

What this show turned out to be was something else.

It is a made-for-TV German production following the standard History Channel formula. The video mixes head shots of various academic experts cut in with sweeping Aegean scenery and a dash of live action reenactment from key points in the life of Alexander. So far so standard.

The problems, however, kick in immediately. The voices have been re-dubbed. For the first “talking head” they didn’t completely remove the German, so you have this odd effect of hearing German softly in the background and English in the foreground. But I can live with that.

The re-dubbing of the narrator seems decent and professional, except where he occasionally slaughters some pronunciation*. The re-dubbing of the various academics is a real mixed-bag. Some of them sound OK and some of them sound just weird. I also have to wonder if the translations are really accurate, or are they skimping on the translations to try to match the words to the video. Part of the way its done makes me wonder if there is an effort to obscure the fact that this is a non-English production.

a 1-line review

Then there are the reenactments, which are probably on par with the lesser History Channel offerings. The dubbing, however, is not. If the academics voices seemed weird, some of those ancient Greeks are even more so. Reviewers on Amazon were impressed with the scenery and costumes. The main figures indeed have decent costumes, although given the haphazardness of the rest of the production I don’t know whether to accept them as correct for the period. Several of the background figures, on the other hand, stood out like sore thumbs. They appeared to be wearing t-shirts printed with a shimmery material so as to look like metal breastplates. I guess its better than nothing.

I got so far in Alexander’s life to where he and his mother fled into exile after Alexander insulted his father’s drunkenness. Flee this production, too, shall I.

*The one that killed me is he referred to Alexanders cavalry as “Calvary.” Oddly, that one got hammered into me in public school, I think an elementary grade. I had a teacher that got rather angry when some of us kids were saying “Calvary” when referring to horses. She told us we were wrong, and explained to us what Calvary means. You probably can’t do that in today’s public schools, can you?